The Serpent Power. Arthur Avalon

the third eye, or Jnānachakshu. Others, avoiding such gross errors, are not free from lesser inaccuracies. Thus, an author who, I am informed, had considerable knowledge of things occult, speaks of the Sushumnā as a “force” which “cannot be energized until Idā and Pinggalā have preceded it,” which “passes to the accompaniment of violent shock through each section of the spinal marrow,” and which on the awakening of the sacral plexus passes along the spinal cord and impinges on the brain, with the result that the neophyte finds “himself to be an unembodied soul alone in the black abyss of empty space, struggling against dread and terror unutterable.” He also writes that the “current” of Kundalinī is called Nādī; that the Sushumnā extends as a nerve to the Brahmarandhra; that the Tattvas are seven in number; and other matters which are inaccurate. The Sushumnā is not a “force,”{94} and does not pass and impinge upon anything, but is the outer of the three Nādīs, which form the conduit for the force which is the arousing of the Devī called Kundalinī, which force is not itself a Nādī, but passes through the innermost, or Chitrinī Nādī, which terminates at the twelve-petalled lotus below the Sahasrāra, from which ascent is made to the Brahmarandhra. It would be easy to point out other mistakes in writers who have referred to the subject. It will be more profitable if I make as correct a statement as my knowledge admits of this mode of Yoga. But I desire to add that some modern Indian writers have also helped to diffuse erroneous notions about the Chakras by describing them from what is merely a materialistic or physiological standpoint. To do so is not merely to misrepresent the case, but to give it away; for physiology does not know the Chakras as they exist in themselves—that is, as centers of consciousness—and of its activity as Prānavāyu Sūkshma or subtle vital force; though it does deal with the gross body which is related to them. Those who appeal to physiology only are like to return non-suited.

      We may here notice the account of a well-known “Theosophical” author{95} regarding what he calls the “Force centers” and the “Serpent Fire,” of which he writes that he has had personal experience. Though Mr. Leadbeater also refers to the Yoga Shāstra, it may perhaps exclude error if we here point out that his account does not profess to be a representation of the teaching of the Indian Yogīs (whose competence for their own Yoga the author somewhat disparages), but that it is the Author’s own original explanation (fortified, as he conceives, by certain portions of Indian teaching) of the personal experience which (he writes) he himself has had. This experience appears to consist in the conscious arousing of the “Serpent Fire,” with the enhanced “astral” and mental vision which he believes has shown him what he tells us. The centers, or Chakras, of the human body are by Mr. Leadbeater described to be vortices of “etheric” matter{96} into which rush from the “astral”{97} world, and at right angles to the plane of the whirling disc, the sevenfold force of the Logos bringing “divine life” into the physical body. Though all these seven forces operate on all the centers, in each of them one form of the force is greatly predominant. These inrushing forces are alleged to set up on the surface of the “etheric double”95 secondary forces at right angles to themselves. The primary force on entrance into the vortex radiates again in straight lines, but at right angles. The number of these radiations of the primal force is said to determine the number of “petals”94 (as the Hindus call them) which the “Lotus” or vortex exhibits. The secondary force rushing round the vortex produces the appearance of the petals of a flower, or, “perhaps more accurately, saucers or shallow vases of wavy iridescent glass.” In this way—that is, by the supposition of an etheric vortex subject to an incoming force of the Logos—both the “Lotuses” described in the Hindu books and the number of their petals is accounted for by the author, who substitutes for the Svādhishthāna center a six-petalled lotus at the spleen,{98} and corrects the number of petals of the lotus in the head, which he says is not a thousand, as the books of this Yoga say, “but exactly 960.”{99} The “etheric” center which keeps alive the physical vehicle is said to correspond with an “astral” center of four dimensions, but between them is a closely woven sheath or web composed of a single compressed layer of physical atoms, which prevents a premature opening up of communication between the planes. There is a way, it is said, in which these may be properly opened or developed so as to bring more through this channel from the higher planes than ordinarily passes thereby. Each of these “astral” centers has certain functions: At the navel, a simple power of feeling; at the spleen, “conscious travel” in the astral body; at the heart, “a power to comprehend and sympathize with the vibrations of other astral entities”; at the throat, power of hearing on the astral plane; between the eyebrows, “astral sight”; at the “top of the head,” perfection of all faculties of the astral life.{100} These centers are therefore said to take the place to some extent of sense organs for the astral body. In the first center, “at the base of the spine,” is the “serpent fire,” or Kundalinī, which exists in seven layers or seven degrees of force.{101} This is the manifestation in etheric matter, on the physical plane, of one of the great world forces, one of the powers of the Logos of which vitality and electricity are examples. It is not, it is said, the same as Prāna, or vitality.{102} The “etheric centers” when fully aroused by the “Serpent Fire” bring down, it is alleged, into physical consciousness whatever may be the quality inherent in the astral center which corresponds to it. When vivified by the “Serpent Fire” they become gates of connection between the physical and “astral” bodies. When the astral awakening of these centers first took place, this was not known to the physical consciousness. But the sense body can now “be brought to share all these advantages by repeating that process of awakening with the etheric centers.” This is done by the arousing through will-force of the “Serpent Fire,” which exists clothed in “etheric matter in the physical plane, and sleeps{103} in the corresponding etheric center—that at the base of the spine.” When this is done it vivifies the higher centers, with the effect that it brings into the physical consciousness the powers which were aroused by the development of their corresponding astral centers. In short, one begins to live on the astral plane, which is not altogether an advantage, were it not that entry into the heaven world is said to be achieved at the close of life on this plane.{104} Thus, at the second center one is conscious in the physical body “of all kinds of astral influences, vaguely feeling that some of them are friendly and some hostile without in the least knowing why.” At the third center one is enabled to remember “only partially” vague astral journeys, with sometimes half-remembrance of a blissful sensation of flying through the air. At the fourth center man is instinctly aware of the joys and sorrows of others, sometimes reproducing in himself their physical aches and pains. At the arousing of the fifth center he hears voices “which make all kinds of suggestions to him.” Sometimes he hears music “or other less pleasant sounds.”{105} Full development secures clairaudience in the “astral” plane. The arousing of the sixth center secures results which are at first of a trivial character, such as “half seeing landscapes and clouds of color,” but subsequently amount to clairvoyance. Here it is said there is a power of magnification by means of an “etheric” flexible tube which resembles “the microscopic snake on the headdress of the Pharaohs.” The power to expand or control the eye of this “microscopic snake” is stated to be the meaning of the statement, in ancient books, of the capacity to make oneself large or small at will.{106} When the pituitary body is brought into working order, it forms a link with the astral vehicle, and when the Fire reaches the sixth center, and fully vivifies it, the voice of the “Master” (which in this case means the higher self in its various stages) is heard.{107} The awakening of the seventh center enables one to leave the body in full consciousness. “When the fire has thus passed through all these centers in a certain order (which varies for different types of people), the consciousness becomes continuous up to the entry into the heaven world{108} at the end of the life on the astral plane.”

      As has been seen from the account hereinbefore given, there are some resemblances between this account and the teaching of the Yoga Shāstra, with which in a general way the author cited appears to have some acquaintance, and which may have suggested to him some features of his account. There are firstly seven centers, which with one exception correspond with the Chakras described. The author says that there are three other lower centers, but that concentration on them is full of danger. What these are is not stated. There is no center lower, that I am aware of, than the Mūlādhāra, and the only center near to it which is excluded, in the above-mentioned account, is the Apas Tattva